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Not only because of this, I wrote about switching to other tools/languages by developers. And take a look on Pascal communities, nowadays its almost died. Shutting down of engines is only some part of whole "picture".

Yes, I agree with this. I actually considered switching to C# since there are a lot of nice engines and the language looks more familiar than C++ or Java.

It's a vicious circle, without a good engine there will be no game developers.. and the community is a minority, so no one wants to do any engine with continuous development.
Too bad, because e.g. ZenGL is just the type of engine (concept, premeditation, cross platform) that would be able to attract people.

Programming language or platform ? Does not matter. Especially for someone who begins with games and syntax of Pascal is good reading. Small game can break and possibly earn millions USD Just have a good idea ​​and complete project.

Hi all, there are no game engines for Pascal. They're all frameworks and/or graphics engines. Some have started to become engines and some pascal games have a code structure that can be described as an engine but there's nothing even approaching the scale of a game engine that's stated as being a game engine.

That's a problem, probably the biggest barrier to wider adoption of Pascal as a game development language.

And until more people start working together on engines, combining their knowledge and experience then that'll never change.

It's such a shame, so many great programmers all in the field of games development and they're all independently working on the same 10% of functionality of a real engine.

I'm just as guilty but in my defence I've approached a dozen or so people on here looking to work together or merge projects, nobody is interested.

It's the main reason I've stepped away from PGD and pascal in general, I love it but I'm serious about making games and for the scope I want then that means working with others. the C++ and Java communities are far, far larger. I can find all the like minded people I like to work on whatever we like.

A system that contains everything you need to create a game without *needing* to write any more code. So things that are often missing from 'engines' are :

- Skinning support combined with skeletal/weighted model format support with a minimum of exporters for 3DS and Blender.
- Path finding and steering algorithms for 3D environments with full physics integration.
- Abstracted game mechanics IE concepts such as projectiles, vehicles, pickups being implemented and customizable.
- An event structure separate from scripting that allows the chaining of events, IE collide, particles, noise, decrement variable (Ie health)
- programmable particle systems tied into events / scripting.
- Abstracted input and focus schemes for controller input. IE the ability to have a mouse cursor style RPG and a mouse controlled FPS from the same sub-system.
- Full support for variable digital controllers (IE analogue sticks) tied into input mechanism to allow for touch/mouse/stick control of the same input channel.
- Templated and scriptable finite state machines and decision trees tied into every relevant part of the engine.

Unreal is a game engine, ID Tech etc. You can pick them up, create some resources and have a playable game without writing any code.

You may want or need to add extra code to a game engine, IE the many custom versions of the Quake engine. But if you can't make a game with a system without writing extra code then it's not a 'game engine'.

It's middleware, graphics engines, whole frameworks, but not a game engine.

Another way of putting it would be to say that game engines are whole games that are setup to be customizable. The more customizable, the more the engine is used in the industry.

(not strictly accurate, unity isn't quite like this for example but as already stated, you can make games in unity using nothing but a mouse. You don't have to write anything substantial, just plug things together)

I've had been contemplating a "unity2d" based around a object pascal syntax..... actually each attempt was sorta leading me in that direction. I still want to do it some day if not just for the satisfaction of finishing it. Something slim but functional.

That's a great idea, I think that your approach with the 3rd party compiler would suit that well. I'm using PascalScript quite a lot atm, objects in my scene graph get registered by name in the VM as the correct class.

I combine this with a flag on objects stating if they were created at design time or during execution allowing you to create scripts that spawn objects but still return to the design state when you click stop

When you talk about what game engine is you also need to take into account of what kinda game you wanna make. For instance:
Text based game game engine would require next:
- keyboard handling to alow player to type in commands
- command parsing so that proper method is executed based on inputed command
- ingame object storage
- ingame event handling
And that is it. A fully capable text based game engine.
For a point and click adventure you would need game engine which would add athleast 2D graphics rendering and some sound support to the above.

You see the definition of when bunch of frameworks become game engine largely depends on what kind of a game you wanna make with it.